Philip N. Johnson-Laird

Michel Denis

Manuel de Vega

Margaret Jean Intons-Peterson

Marc Marscharck

This second volume in the Counterpoints Series focuses on alternative models of visual-spatial processing in human cognition. The editors provide a historical and theoretical introduction and offer ideas about directions and new research designs.

Models of Visuospatial Cognition

Robert Logie

Cesare Cornoldo

Johannes EngelKamp

Imagery, Language and Visuo-Spatial Thinking discusses the remarkable human ability to use mental imagery in everyday life: from helping plan actions and routes to aiding creative thinking; from making sense of and remembering our immediate environment to generating pictures in our minds from verbal descriptions of scenes or people. The book also considers the important theme of how individuals differ in their ability to use imagery. With contributions from leading researchers in the field, this book will be of interest to advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in cognitive psychology, cognitive science and cognitive neuropsychology.

Imagery, Language and Visuo-Spatial Thinking

Marc Marschark

This second volume in the Counterpoints Series, which explores issues in psychology, child development, linguistics, and neuroscience, focuses on alternative models of visual-spatial processing in human cognition. This text offers extended chapters from three of the most respected and recognized investigators in the field: Michel Denis, Margaret Intons-Peterson, and Philip Johnson-Laird. Denis considers the role of mental imagery in spatial cognition and topographical orientation; images are viewed as a form of mental representation that is similar to real-world objects. Intons-Peterson examines spatial representation in short-term, or working-memory, considering the relationship of visual-spatial processes to subjects' expectations and individual differences. Johnson-Laird approaches the issue of visual-spatial representation from a "mental models" perspective, considering the relationship of images to various cognitive events. The editors provide a historical and theoretical introduction; and a final chapter integrates the arguments of the chapters, offering ideas about new directions and new research designs.

All living creatures inscribe their activity in space. Human beings acquire knowledge of this space by traversing it, listening to verbal descriptions, and looking at maps, atlases, and digital media. We memorize routes, compare distances mentally, and retrieve our starting place after a long journey. Space and Spatial Cognition provides an up-to-date introduction to the elements of human navigation and the mental representation of our environment. This book explores the mental capacities which enable us to create shortcuts, imagine new pathways, and thus demonstrate our adaptation to the environment. Using a multidisciplinary approach which draws on psychology, neuroscience, geography, architecture and the visual arts, the author presents answers to a number of questions. Which mental capacities do people mobilize when confronted with space? Which brain functions do they implement? How do digital technologies extend these capacities? By presenting space at the crossroads of a number of disciplines, this volume reveals how each of them enhances our understanding of human behaviour in space. Space and Spatial Cognition provides a unique insight into all facets of spatial cognition, including spatial behaviour, language, and future technologies. It will be the ideal companion for all students and researchers in the field.

A Multidisciplinary Perspective

Space and Spatial Cognition

This special issue includes revised versions of papers presented at the IUPsyS Symposium "Psychology and Cognitive Science", held during the XXVIth International Congress of Psychology in Montreal, August 1996. The introductory article reports the results of an international survey conducted for the IUPsyS on the place and role of psychology in cognitive science; the next three papers are illustrations of interdisciplinary approaches to cognitive issues. Approaches to discourse comprehension by cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and neurobiology are discussed, and it is considered how the human mind and machines represent knowledge from discourse and text. Finally, there is a description of a computational approach to vision and language inspired by psychological theories.

An International Perspective

Psychology and Cognitive Science

La psychologie a pour mission de rendre compte des grandes fonctions par lesquelles le système cognitif humain interagit avec son environnement et crée de celui-ci des représentations utilisables dans des conduites adaptées. En reconnaissant le caractère partageable du concept de cognition, la psychologie a joué un rôle essentiel dans la création du courant des sciences cognitives, qui implique toutes les disciplines intéressées par les processus de traitement de l'information et de gestion des connaissances. L'ouvrage passe en revue les fonctions cognitives sur lesquelles des collaborations privilégiées ont été développées avec les autres disciplines cognitives. Après un chapitre introductif analysant la place de la psychologie dans le concert des sciences cognitives, les domaines abordés par les auteurs des huit chapitres suivants vont de la perception au raisonnement en passant par la sensorimotricité, la cognition spatiale, le traitement de la parole, la compréhension du langage, la mémoire et l'apprentissage, sans omettre le domaine important des émotions. Chaque chapitre présente un tableau des formes de collaboration interdisciplinaires qui se sont illustrées ou qui sont en émergence, principalement avec la linguistique, l'intelligence artificielle et les neurosciences.

La psychologie cognitive

Chiara Meneghetti

Ineke Van Der Ham

Francesca Pazzaglia

Wayfinding and Navigation: Strengths and Weaknesses in Atypical and Clinical Populations

Stephen M. Kosslyn

Stephen Michael Kosslyn

Many topics have inspired significant amounts of neuroimaging research in recent years, and the study of mental imagery was one of the earliest to receive a thorough empirical investigation. Twenty years later, the goal of understanding this pervasive but elusive phenomenon continues to motivate a number of sustained research programs on the part of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists. The issues at stake are easy to formulate, even if the answers sometimes may be difficult to obtain: Which parts of the human brain are active when a person generates a memory image of an absent object? To what extent does mental imagery activate cortical structures known to subserve perceptual visual experience? If imagery and like-modality perception produce similar patterns of brain activation, what sorts of theories should cognitive scientists develop about the underlying mechanisms? How can we best understand why people differ in their imagery abilities? These are questions to which the contributors to the special issue "Neuroimaging of Mental Imagery" offer answers, through seven original studies based on the use of modern neuroimaging techniques, primarily positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). These techniques are used in the context of a variety of cognitive tasks involving memory, problem solving, and other processes. Unlike most research in psychology, much of the work reported here explicitly addresses individual differences, which must be considered carefully in order to provide comprehensive accounts of the results of imagery experiments. Although these investigations were planned and carried out independently, we find a remarkable convergence among them. And this may be the surest sign that a field is indeed moving forward.

Michel Denis

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